The following is a list of the plug-ins that I use on this site. I am keeping this page updated, so that the links and version numbers should all be correct.

This was last updated on January 28, 2008, when I added Dean’s Permalink Migration.

The site currently uses WordPress 2.1.2, and will ocntinue to do so until I have time to deal with the new in-built tagging features in 2.3.1, and work out the easiest way to use them to replace Ultimate Tag Warrior.

Administrative

Advanced-Admin-Menus provides a drop-down menu at the top of the administration pages. This means that you are only ever one click away from any admin option, which is good if you find yourself on a slow connection. It requires javascript to be enabled.

Dean’s Permalink Migration has enabled me to change the permalink structure here from date/name to id-number/name without breaing any of the existing internal or external links. This is fantastic! However, according to Weblog Tools Collection “a fellow by the name of g30rg3_x has discovered two bugs. g30rg3_x has tried to contact the author of the plugin but has not had any success in doing so. Instead, he has taken on the liberty of releasing his own special sub-version for the plugin which contains the necessary fixes. The plugin is called 1.1-gx and uses some of the WordPress coding standards that are suggested by WordPress developers. You can download a fixed version of this plugin by clicking here.“. So I did.

ST Visualize Advanced Features provides a single, simple feature that ought to be in WordPress anyway. The wysiwyg editor has a second level of buttons that you can access through alt-shift-v - and these buttons include several useful features including a drop-down menu with the 6 heading tags. This adds an additional button to the top row of buttons that enables you to toggle the second row on and off. That’s all - and that’s very useful.

Spam Karma 2 is designed to prevent comments being flooded with spam, without requiring users to enter codes or answer questions. I have been using it for six weeks now and my comment spam has dropped to zero.

WPDBManager is a fully functional database manager that “allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of database”.

Data-mining

Link Harvest gathers all the links that are included in the entries on this site and displays them on a page of their own.

Popularity Contest enables ranking of the posts by popularity; using the behavior of visitors to determine each post’s popularity.

Search Everything extends WordPress’s searching capacities. It enables users to search pages, attachments, drafts, comments and custom fields (metadata).

Ultimate Tag Warrior organises the addition of tags to the bottom of posts, and provides a tag cloud on a page of its own.

Navigation

Contextual Related Posts, by Mark(Madhujit) Ghosh, works out a set of five entries ostensibly related to the entry being viewed, and displays them as a list of links.

FeatureMe allows any posts to be added to a list that can be displayed in the sidebar, by checking or unchecking a tick-box in the Write Posts page. I am using it to signal what I am revisiting now.

Front Page News is my first homegrown plug-in, and lets me change the lead article and image on the front page from a panel in the Admin section. I couldn’t find anything else to do it so I did it myself.

In Series provides a mechanism for linking articles together into series, and having the series linked together. Importantly (for my use here) it does not use the existing category system to do this, but instead uses its own separate tables.

SRG Clean Archives provides a much more usable monthly archives page.

W_P-SNAP! provides a mechanism for sorting categories alphabetically, and displaying a list of letters coloured according to whether or not they contain entries.

Social networking

Gregarious claims to be the ultimate social networking plug-in, and this may well be true since it has the ability to use other plug-ins as modules. Share This is now switched off, for example, and working as a module here - and is in fact more customisable now.

coComment Enhancer adds functionality to the little-used Comments box. Specifically it links anyone who wants to the coComment web site, where you can all your comments all over the web.

Share This enables users to easily share posts and pages. It supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites.

Sphere Related Content enablers readers to find posts from across the web related to the one they have just read. It works via the databases at Sphere. Actually I find it useful myself, because when I have written something I sphere it to see what seems to be related!

Twitter Tools, by Alex King, enables me to post a snippet on the sidebar of the site telling the world what I am doing. This is then synchronised with my Twitter account, which in turn syncs it to my Facebook profile page.

Other Functionality

Footnotes provides an easy way to add footnotes to an entry. I have added it as a trial, because some of the academic papers will need a way to do this. The author’s help page is useful.

Kimili Flash Embed provides a simple way to embed Flash movies in posts. It gets round the need to copy and paste long object tags, and it also sidesteps a bug in the way WordPress deals with some tags. Currently it turns <embed> into <ibed>, which can only be altered by directly writing into the database, or by patching some of the core php files.

No Self Pings simply stops the site from registering internal references from one article to another as pings. This is absultely wonderful, because I have been deleting them by hand for months now!

Our To-Do List provides a simple task list that is read/write on the Admin pages, and read-only on the main site. It doesn’t allow for parent/child relationships and it doesn’t date the tasks, but it is fine as a way of reminding me of the development schedule I have in mind.

Simple Forum provides a simple forum page!

Structured Blogging provides a new interface, new page templates, and new style sheets in order that entries can be broken down into usable micro-content.